218 PHYSOSTOML 



the term, and at the outset I am inclined to admit that snch appears to be lost 

 in obscurity. 



It is stated that at the funeral feast of the founder of the Charterhouse in 

 1612, six dishes of "Whitebait" were included in the bill of fare. If we refer 

 to Pennant's British Zoology, vol. iii, p. 371, 1776, we read as follows : — "During 

 the month of July there appear in the Thames, near Blackwall and Greenwich, 

 innumerable multitudes of small fish which are known to the Londoners by the 

 name of whitebait. They are esteemed very delicious when fried with fine flour, 

 and occasion, during the season, a vast resort of the lower order of epicures to 

 the taverns contiguous to the places they are taken at." 



Pennant stated they belong neither to the shad nor the sprat, nor are they 

 the young of smelts, but bear a great similarity to the bleak, to which fish he 

 appended them, although with doubt. Donovan (1808) obtained as whitebait the 

 young of the shad, and calmly expressed his opinion that Pennant never saw a 

 whitebait, or, if he did, his examples were bad, or his investigations hasty and 

 negligent, while his figure conveyed no just idea of the fish. Next we have 

 Tarrell (1828), who considered that both Pennant and Donovan were in error, 

 as he saw in these fish a new species of Clupea, which he termed Glupea alba. 

 M. Valenciennes (1847) went still further, instituting a genus (Rogenia) for its 

 reception, while he remarked that some young sprats were captured along with 

 the true forms during the months of April, May, and June. Dr. Gunther did not 

 coincide with any of the four previous writers, and considered it to be the young 

 of the common herring. 



It is unquestionable that the true whitebait belongs to the herring family, 

 but are such mature forms as asserted by Yarrell and Valenciennes ; or immature 

 fish, as believed in by the majority of inquirers, and as such were formerly 

 protected by legislative enactments ? In this investigation we must not lose 

 sight of the fact that the herring family, more especially among the species 

 composing the genus Chipea, possess many pelagic forms, which live together in 

 large assemblages or schools, the young of which but rarely enter brackish, and 

 never as a rule fresh water. Another peculiarity is that, the teeth being small 

 and deciduous, a considerable diversity as regards their existence may occur in 

 examples of the same species. 



Are whitebait mature fish ? This question has been answered by most 

 investigators in the negative, by Yarrell in the affirmative, while fortunately the 

 specimens of this last author, being still in the British Museum, are open to 

 re-examination. All are certainly the young of the common herring. Yarrell 

 remarked that these fish are taken in the Thames " from the beginning of April 

 to the end of September . . . and specimens of the young fish of the year, four 

 or five inches long, are then not uncommon, but mixed even at this late period of 

 the season with others of very small size, as though the roe had continued to be 

 deposited throughout the summer. Yet the parent fish are not caught." I have 

 now a fine series of whitebait captured during the months referred to by Yarrell, 

 and from the same locality (the Thames), and these I now propose enumerating, 

 premising that, as the migrations of members of the herring family are variable, 

 occasionally forsaking their usual spawning grounds, it does not appear improbable 

 that one species may have left and given place to another, to be again changed to 

 the original form on the return of the water to some condition which suited its 

 first occupants. Thus Yarrell observes : " Formerly great quantities of the 

 Twaite shad were caught with nets in that part of the Thames opposite Millbank, 

 Westminster." At Teignmouth in Devonshire, in August, 1882, all the " britt " 

 or whitebait were young of the herring,' while in August, 1883, every one were 

 small sprats. 



I examined 138 examples of whitebait from the Thames, taken during the 

 months of May and June, 1878, the longest of which was 2£ inches ; out of these 

 about one in ten were sprats, the remainder the young of the herring. In August 

 I examined forty-six examples from 2 to 3| inches in length ; out of these twenty- 

 four, from 2 to 2' 7 inches long, were sprats, and twenty-one, from 2'8 to 3£ inches 

 long, were young herrings, these latter now commencing to grow to a larger size 



